


The One Who Liked to Be Wrong

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: (sort of), Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Breakup, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, no fluff in this one sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 05:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14710287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: Phil breathed a sigh like the sound of constellations dying.“I do love you. That’s why I’m telling you to go.”Dan shook his head, eyes wide but unseeing. The ceramic shard dug deeper into the flesh of his palm. “No. You’re wrong.”Because Dan would much rather be wrong, today and tomorrow, and the day after that, than spend a minute apart from Phil. A snapshot of a beautiful love that took a wrong turn and Phil’s plea to Dan to save himself before he utterly destroys him.





	1. The One Who Liked to Be Wrong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yiffandquiff (princesslexi763)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesslexi763/gifts).



> A/N: Hello y’all and welcome to my submission for my first Phandom Reverse Bang ever! The general concept of this story was thought up by the brilliant Kaiya (@thathipsterkaiya here on ao3) and beta’d by the awesome SuperblySarcasticSam. The breathtaking [artwork](http://lilacskylester.tumblr.com/post/174068105887/this-is-a-fourth-art-that-i-created-for-the), which is the very heart of what PRB is about, was created by the amazing @lilacskylester! Go check them all out because they’ve got some seriously heartwarming (or heart-wrenching) works on their ao3/tumblr profiles. :)
> 
> By the way, the verb tense changes in this story may get a bit confusing, but they are purposeful. More will be explained in the longer author’s note in the next chapter. Enjoy!

I. Denial

Dan could still remember the day his aunt told him about the five stages of grief. Her breath had smelled like cherries as she’d leaned close to him behind the rear pew where he was huddled. It was half past something o’clock in the afternoon and the shadows of the last straggling wellwishers stretched out far across the flagstones as he watched them finally leave the church and head their different ways.

He’d never expected anyone to come find him, much less his aunt. He was a child; no one comforted children at a memorial service. They were the ones who watched, eyes darting from face to face, sensing the tacit rule that to run around and chatter was forbidden but not knowing why. 

His aunt, on the other hand, was a paradox, one he never understood as a boy and who grew even harder to understand as the years wore on. She lived for the rules and she lived to break them.

“Do you want a cherry?” she’d asked him.

Dan remembered staring at her speechlessly. She wasn’t looking at him, but at the mint green Tupperware tumbler in her hand. She’d already unscrewed the lid and fished out two of the brightest cherries floating around. Dan’s stomach turned but he didn’t have the heart to shake his head.

It didn’t matter, because his aunt barely even glanced at him as she popped the candied fruit into her own mouth. The lacquer on her left pointer finger was chipped.

“They say the denial comes first,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly steady, on the edge of loud, even, like a teacher repeating a lesson to obstinate pupils. “Five stages. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.” She swallowed the second cherry. “They say it doesn’t have to be in that order, but I call bullshit. It’s always in that exact order. Never any different.”

For some reason, Dan didn’t flinch at the curse that fell from her lips. He couldn’t. Not when the next thing she said in her too-loud voice into the echo of the empty church was far more chilling.

“Five stages. For some people, there are only ever four.”

~

Fifteen years later, Dan was still counting cherries.

He told himself he shouldn’t open the fridge. He knew he shouldn’t, and yet there was his hand already gripping the door, opening it.

It looked like five beers were still there shoved onto the rear shelf, he also told himself.

Phil never snored anymore when he was passed out wasted on the couch. There was a time he used to snore, loud and annoying and adorable, and Dan would always let out a long-suffering sigh accompanied by a reluctant smile as he nudged his boyfriend first with a finger and then his knee. When Phil wouldn’t wake up, Dan would bend down despite the protesting creak in his back and loop Phil’s bony arm around his shoulders. It would be an effort to haul the six-foot-something man to his feet in this leaden state, but Dan would do it. The number of steps from the couch back to the bedroom always seemed fewer than they really were in those moments.

Dan glanced back over his shoulder at where Phil’s familiar form was sprawled across the couch, mop of black hair hanging unkempt over the armrest and his arms askew at too-wrong angles almost as if they’d been broken. He swallowed. He wanted to sigh, smile, even shake his head a little in fondness. He wanted to.

Instead, his left hand left the refrigerator handle and crept up to his warm and patchy cheek. The ghost of a sting taunted him.

“You can’t hear me, can you?” he spoke into the dimness. Maybe he was hoping for a response; perhaps he was not. “You never do.”

Even those three words felt like blasphemy on his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he followed up a beat later. “I…”

Phil’s head flopped to the side as he let out an alarming gurgling sound that Dan was now all too accustomed to.

“This isn’t about me. It never was.”

Dan’s gaze trailed from the tip of Phil’s unkempt quiff to the proud arch of his nose, down the parted lips and the bony clavicles to the hollow stomach draped by his arm. His skin was pale, too pale. It always had been. How different it was to see him now in an eerily similar position to the first time he saw him like this--and yet how very much the same. Dan nearly wished he couldn’t remember it.

The first time they got drunk together was quite by accident.

The warmth of Phil’s hand against Dan’s side was the first memory of that night etched into Dan’s brain. Dan could still feel in his mind the electrifying sensation of each individual finger pressing against his skin through the flimsy shirt--could still feel the tickle of Phil’s breath at the top of his head, the rumble of the laugh in his chest against his back. How cold, so very cold, the metal of their seat in the tube, but how none of it matters because Phil’s smiling his maddening and crooked smile and his eyes are a wild cerulean blue and his pupils are dilated in the night.

They smell the cheap drinks on each other’s breath, and out of the telepathic connection that characterizes them so well, Phil whispers, “Chris,” and it drives them to another fit of giggles. 

“Your voice,” Dan slurs. “It sounds so nice when you’re tipsy.”

“Nice, huh?”

“Shut up. I mean deep. Projected.”

“Sexy?”

“Look who’s putting words into my own mouth.” A hiccup, and then: “...Maybe.”

“Don’t flatter me, Dan. You’re the one who’s built like a god.”

Dan snorts and almost doubles over in laughter.

Phil’s voice rumbles in his chest against Dan’s head as he says fondly, “Don’t die down there. I still want to do something with you when we get back to my place.”

That something, it turns out, is a drunken Q&A video.

“We can’t call it philisnotonfire,” Dan complains back in Phil’s bedroom. “We are very much on fire like this.”

“Was that an accidental innuendo or…?”

“You know nothing sexual is accidental with me.”

The faintest hint of a blush creeps up from Phil’s neck to his cheekbones. “Shut up.”

“You asked.”

“So would you rather have flippers for ears or bunny ears for hands?”

Dan pretends to consider the question. “Flippers for ears,” he pronounces solemnly. “You could pull it off as a high-fashion look, I think. Or if you’re _that_ bothered by the long ears, you could always wear a hat--who even _sent_ in that question?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t check.” Phil’s giggle is marked by the unmistakable peep of his tongue from behind his teeth. “Would you really want to be deaf, Dan?”

“Who even said I’d be deaf? My ears could be somewhere else! My fricking _skin_ could be a hearing organ!”

“You’re so strange.”

“Says you,” Dan scoffs. “You like it. I’m the only one who’d put up with that strange, strange brain of yours.”

Phil pouts. “Well, you’re the only one I’d like to kiss, so touché.”

“We’re going to have to edit an awful lot out of this, aren’t we?”

“ _I’m_ going to do the editing, and you’re going to wander in and out of my room drinking my Ribena and critiquing what I’m doing. So, yeah. We. Sure.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t bask in my presence. You love it.”

Phil cocks his head and locks eyes with Dan then, and the flavor in the air shifts so palpably that it brings Dan to a pause. Phil murmurs, “Yeah. I do love it.”

Dan might mock all the YA literature he has ever read, but he finds himself floundering now in the sheer earnestness in Phil’s ocean blue eyes. Their color wavers like the vulnerability on Phil’s face, and yet there is something so open and honest there that for a second it terrifies Dan and he grabs at Phil’s hand instead for a distraction. He doesn’t recall when his ribs began to ache from the feeling of this closeness--because they are sitting so very close to one another, skin brushing through their jeans and shirts and veins running afire from the alcohol in their systems.

Phil’s gaze falls unfocused on where their hands interlock in his lap, below the frame of the camera. “I don’t think there will ever come a time when I will stop loving it.”

 _It_ , Dan mulls silently. The word tastes peculiar in his mind, like a clumsy metaphor for _you_.

“Do you think it will?” Phil speaks again. He stumbles over his next words. “I mean, will that time come? When--you know. Will I ever end up being like him?”

Dan doesn’t need to ask whom Phil is referring to. He wants to say no, he wants to promise Phil _never_. Because Phil’s eyes are shimmering with what he will deny later were unshed tears and he’s squeezing Dan’s hand harder than he ever has before.

“Would you like me to turn off the camera?” he whispers.

Phil shrugs and whispers back, “You don’t have to.”

“I don’t think that time will come,” Dan says finally. “It can’t and it won’t, not if you know what George is like and what you hate most about him. That’s how you know you won’t fall into the same path, because that’s the very kind of person you’re trying your damnedest not to be.”

“But sometimes they say you become the very thing you hate.”

“Isn’t that something they say in the movies?”

Phil’s mouth twitches. Even in their tipsy state, neither of them have the courage to point out that Phil’s last question has gone unanswered.

Dan padded across the carpet of the living room and curled up against the side of the armrest where Phil’s head dangled. He studied him now in the alien glow of the refrigerator light drifting around the corner, and he wondered if Phil still asked himself the same question he’d asked Dan during that Q&A video that never did quite get edited or published.

He wondered if Phil even cared to remember that question, or the raw and naive honesty in Dan’s attempt at an answer.

And he never quite knew when he fell headlong into unconsciousness, but the next morning when the vermillion stripes of light through the blinds woke him at some ungodly hour, he realized he’d never moved from his position with his arms wrapped round his shaking knees. Somehow, he told himself, it never seemed right anymore to fall into bed beside Phil’s limp body when one of them was far too sober and far too afraid of the emotions threatening to overcome him.

 

II. Anger

“Where were you all weekend?”

“Martyn’s.”

“I tried calling and texting you.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you call back?”

“I’m sorry.”

That doesn’t answer Dan’s question. They both know that.

Still, Phil stands in the foyer, breathing hard, rivulets of water running down his jet black hair and across his skin which seems translucent in the halogen light. His mouth moves imperceptibly, but no sound comes out.

“She took him back.”

“Martyn and Cornelia broke up?”

“No,” Phil says sharply. His throat seems stopped up with the unspoken apology that follows.

Unconsciously Dan falters a step back. He’s known Kate nearly as long as he’s known her son Phil in person, and the woman is as sweet and strong and independent-minded as any ideal mother in his mind. The mere image of Kate and George in the same room together again has him reeling. Not knowing where to draw the strength to process this information, he makes a useless gesture with his hands.

Phil closes his eyes and sways on his feet before Dan. The younger boy breathes out a pained sigh and closes the gap between them. He wraps his arms around Phil, drenched clothes and all, and with his left hand he starts to trace patterns along the embroidered cherry blossom on the back of his rain jacket. He rest his chin on Phil’s shoulder, breathes in the comfort of his scent, waits for Phil to return the embrace--but it doesn’t come.

Dan pulls away from Phil with a quizzical look. Phil is stiff beneath his touch; the only discernible movement is the waves of tremors rippling across his neck and shoulders. In his eyes, Dan finds what he can only describe as the trembling light of a lost boy grappling to make sense of it all.

Phil finally moves to lay a hand in the crook of Dan’s neck, and his touch is firm, maybe even dominant. Though that is not unusual for their relationship, Dan is surprised nonetheless. Never in his sadness has Phil shaken with such anger.

“Dan. I love you. I need you.”

The younger boy is about to reply when Phil leans forward and mashes his mouth against Dan’s. His breath is hot and his touch on Dan’s neck is charged with electricity. Dan leans into the kiss and returns it full force despite himself, until Phil’s tongue slips behind his teeth and he tastes it then, the undeniable traces of his last drink.

Dan fights to pull away. “Phil, wait!” he gasps. “You’re not yourself.”

Phil shakes his head. He’s almost incoherent. “No, I need you.” He grabs the sides of Dan’s head again with both hands and renews the kiss. Before either of them knows it, Phil has walked Dan backward until he’s pressed up against the wall of the kitchen doorway. Dan trips and fumbles behind him for a handhold, but it’s not as if he needed it anyway, for Phil presses his body flush against Dan’s and lowers one of his hands to pin Dan’s hip to the wall. Phil’s thigh finds its way between Dan’s knees and parts his legs.

A small part of Dan is crying in protest, not for his own sake, but for Phil’s. He knows Phil and he knows his boyfriend will wake up on the morrow with the weight of regret and endless apologies on his chest. But the greater part of him is struck dumb by the unwarranted display of rage in Phil’s hands and lips, the passion of his body and the heat of his skin which seems to surround him. And perhaps a side of Dan marvels at his dominance. In spite of himself, he grips the front of Phil’s jacket for support and kisses back for all he’s worth, feeling utterly weak at the knees.

Phil begins to move his mouth downward to Dan’s neck and sucks at the sensitive skin. Dan hisses and groans at the arousal and can hardly control himself from bucking forward. His jeans feel hot and tight and the clash with Phil’s groin is too good and too tortuous at the same time.

Never in his right mind would Dan allow Phil to take things this far in such an emotional state. But in this moment, Dan curses logic and allows himself to be scooped up and led to the bedroom, knocking over a table and a book along the way, and he curses the indescribable pleasure of being dominated by the Phil he hardly knows, the Phil with shaking arms and burning eyes and wicked lips like fire.

A year later, Dan awoke not in his own bed with his limbs tangled together with a sleeping Phil’s, but slumped at an angle between the dishwasher and the tiled floor in the kitchen with a pain like a sledgehammer between his eyes. He remembered the night before like deja vu: the very same as that night one year ago, with Phil stumbling through the doorway with vodka on his breath, quaking silently and crying with anger. But unlike that night one year ago, this night ended with Dan on the floor.

It took Dan several minutes to pull his eyes open and fully adjust to the brightness of the light around him. He could not make sense at first of the shapes littering the floor before him. Another minute later, he mustered the strength to move his legs, and his foot came in contact with a plastic tumbler and the napkin rack which had fallen from the counter.

With that one movement that sent a jolt of pain through his stiff muscles, everything came flooding back to him. The icy stone of the counter against his back. The hunger in Phil’s irises, the bright foyer light that threw his features into shadows. The hands on Dan’s neck and hips and the chest crushing against his. The unadulterated despair in the voice whispering hotly in his ear: _I love you. I need you_.

And the one thing he heard then that he had never heard before: _You’re the only one I have_.

Dan’s breath twisted into a ragged gasp. He waited for it, the impact of the tears to hit him, but it never came. His insides quaked with the anticipation. Stomach knotting and unknotting, he tried once again to move. His body cried out in protest.

Slowly, Dan managed to gain a grip on the counter and pull himself up. His knees nearly buckled, but with another moan and a heavy breath, he found himself back on his feet. His bottom burned.

He closed his eyes. Waited for the rage. Just like the tears, it never came. Instead, nausea overcame him and rattled his bones.

He made it to the bin in a split second. As he leaned doubled over the wastebasket, chest heaving and vision spinning, the glint of glass buried in the trash caught his eye.

He counted. One, two, three.

One, two, three.

And again. One, two, three.

His mind struggled to register it, but he was tired, so very tired, of denying it. There were three empty beer bottles in the bin.

This would not be the first time Dan tried to cry, nor the last. Likewise, it would not be the first or the last time he failed. The tears had not come in over a year and he feared they never would again.

 

III. Bargaining

Maybe a small part of him had actually hoped Phil would disappear again, despite himself, because Dan found himself suppressing a sigh of relief when he stepped into the bedroom and his boyfriend was nowhere in sight. The low, incessant buzz of heat wafted in through the window left open during the night. He thought he should close it and turn on the fan, shut out the noise and jumbled voices from outside, but his feet chose not to move in that direction.

Instead, he bent and gathered up the jeans and shirts strewn across the carpet. His belly rumbled, but he couldn’t bring himself to tiptoe back to the kitchen just yet.

Time passed sluggishly in his half-conscious state. With wooden hands he opened the top drawer to shove some of the cleaner clothes back in. The piles of washed pants inside were in disarray, too, and he grabbed them and dumped them on the bed for resorting and folding. As he turned back, something small and blue caught his eye.

Dan froze. It couldn’t be.

Against his better judgment, he reached in and picked up the velvet box. The navy blue of it was faded in the corners, as if it had been rolling around the back of the drawer for quite some time. He popped it open.

He was okay. He told himself that.

Two rings, nearly identical, nestled in the cushions next to one another. One was darker titanium, almost black compared to the silver, and in the midst of everything crumbling around him Dan found it in himself to give a soft laugh when he realized he knew which one was meant to match his aesthetic better. Phil had even listened in his half-asleep state when Dan had rambled about his dogma that wedding rings should have no more than five stones but no less than three.

The unwarranted smile hurt Dan’s cheeks. Against all logic, in defiance of the confusion of ecstasy that had bloomed in his chest, it still hurt to breathe.

This was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But he liked it. He wanted it. This was all he had ever dreamed of.

The sheer nostalgia of the feeling of _wrongness_ sent him back to another time, another place, in the middle of a cloud of steam and nighttime buzz when he and Phil are stretching beside one another in the empty hotel pool. The teenage lifeguard is buried deep in her novel and too far away to hear the tired murmurs between them.

“Three is too many. Two is just right.”

“Like you and Martyn?”

Phil cocks his head philosophically to the side. “I suppose so. Yeah. We grew up just about best friends, even though we did torture each other sometimes.”

“That’s part of the bildungsroman experience,” Dan chuckles with a wave of his hand. “All right, I concede, two would be just right. I want one of them to be a girl.”

“Both could be girls, if you wanted.”

“But we’d just be tempted to give one of them all the hand-me-downs.”

“That’s not so bad,” Phil muses. He falls silent again and plays with the water in his cupped hands, refusing to look up at Dan.

Dan nudges him gently in the side. “What is it?”

“It’s probably not a good idea to have kids…”

“What? Why not?”

“Why would it? If I’m going to end up just like him.”

Back then, Dan hears himself say, “You won’t. I know it.” The sincerity of his tone envelops them in a companionable silence amid the drifting curtains of steam and chlorine.

Today, Dan almost wanted to say: “Maybe I like you that way.”

He didn't know why that didn't sound as profoundly terrible as it should have.

 

IV. Depression

The image of George pinning Kate in a chokehold in a dimly lit bathroom spun around Dan’s mind as he surveyed the detritus around him. It was an image he had never witnessed, but hearing Phil retell it with stopped-up sobs was more than enough to burn the scene into his brain. 

Dan kicked at the nearest shard of a broken cereal bowl with his bare foot, wishing for the sharp corner to pierce his skin and draw blood. He huffed out a curse when nothing happened.

A crunch of trainers on ceramic drew his attention away from the floor. He saw the gasp written on Phil’s face before he even heard it.

And guilt. So much guilt.

Phil struggled to meet Dan’s eyes. A beat after he finally did, his gaze swerved left again.

He cleared his throat. Coughed. His hand was still frozen on the knob of the front door behind him.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember. Did I break those plates?”

It struck Dan as such an odd thing to say now. He didn’t make any move to stand up, merely shook his head with whatever energy was left in him.

“No. I did.”

Not a muscle in Phil’s face moved, and yet his wince was palpable in the air to them both.

“I didn’t get a chance to cook,” Dan spoke again.

“Oh. Um. That’s all right, I actually brought takeout with me…” Phil rustled the bag as if to prove the point.

“If you step around the rug and don’t take off your shoes until you get to the living room, you should be fine.”

“Dan.”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure the shards didn’t go everywhere.”

“Dan, we need to talk.”

“No,” Dan choked out. “No, we don’t. We need to eat and have a quiet night and go to bed. Tomorrow everything will be okay.”

This was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But it was all going to be okay.

Phil’s hand was on Dan’s shoulder. In spite of his eerie calm, something inside him cracked, and he flinched away with a muffled cry. Phil gasped. A heartbeat later, he crouched lower in front of Dan with his hands wavering in the air, uncertain where to place them, wanting nothing else than to scoop him up and comfort the unnamed emotion away.

After another second of indecision, Phil leaned forward again and wrapped his arms gently around Dan’s torso. The angle was awkward with Dan being slumped against the wall. Thankfully, Dan didn’t stiffen, but neither did he raise his arms to return the embrace. Phil didn’t miss the pang of how it reminded him of when he did not hug Dan back that night one year ago. He couldn’t miss it, even if he tried.

“Come on,” he whispered. Pressed a tentative kiss to the top of Dan’s curls. “Let’s sit on the couch and talk. I’ll take care of the food. You just eat and listen.”

Time passed in fragments, like the light of a sunset barred by blinds waving in the wind. Bits and pieces of Dan’s memory registered the wooden taste of the pad thai on the plate in his lap and the veins rippling in Phil’s hand when he bent down to pick up the plastic fork Dan dropped on the carpet. Dan couldn’t remember if they talked about anything. No, he was wrong: Phil did talk about something. Dan couldn’t remember if he responded.

Phil set down the empty rice cup with a shuddering breath. “Dan.”

“Yeah.”

“We have to talk about last night.”

“What about it?” Dan counted the dried bits of noodle on the edge of his plate with his fork.

“Were you...okay with that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Well, why wouldn’t I be, then?”

“You do know what we’re talking about, right?”

Dan couldn’t stop his left hand from scratching incessantly at his nape. A shiver crawled up the vein in his arm. “We had sex in the kitchen. Not the first time that’s happened.”

Now it was Dan who refused to look Phil in the eyes. Phil’s brows knit together and he rubbed his palms with a slow, dry sound. He tipped his head downward even further as if to lure his boyfriend to make eye contact. But Dan was resolute.

“I guess not,” Phil conceded at last. “You didn’t… _want_ it, though.”

Dan threw down the fork with a sound of exasperation. “What’s your point, Phil?”

“That this has to stop.”

“This? What _this_? Don’t you mean _you_ have to stop?”

The muscle in Phil’s jaw twitched. His knuckles folded into fists till they grew white. “You’re right.”

“So why don’t you.” Dan uttered it like a statement. Then he crossed his arms and swallowed.

The shadow of a tree outside their window danced its way across the carpet in the silence that stretched between them. When Phil spoke again, it was in barely a whisper. “I’m just like him. We both know it--I knew it all along. And...and this has to stop, even though I’ve decided to go get help. Because it’s not fair to you and you shouldn’t have to be the one to always be there to _understand_.”

Maybe moisture was beginning to prickle at the back of Dan’s eyes; maybe not. All he knew was that they were dry again when he drew the black titanium ring from his pocket and turned to face Phil. “Isn’t this enough of a symbol that I’m not going anywhere?”

“No!” Phil’s voice came out sharp, strained. He passed a hand over his eyes to shadow the glint of tears in them. “Please, Dan, don’t say that. You know I would want you to be my husband any day, any time. Anywhere. You _know_ that. But we can’t be talking about that anymore, not when we know how wrong I am for you.”

“I told you you didn’t have to be. Why can’t we fight this together?”

The depth of the shaking in Phil’s body matched the quiver in his tone. “Because I can’t fight it myself. How could you even begin to fight it for me?”

Dan swallowed again and looked away.

“I need you to understand in a different way, Dan. I don’t know if I could ever change. But you--you? You deserve so much better.”

“No. I don’t want to deserve better. I want to deserve you.”

“You don’t even know what you’re saying anymore.”

“Yes, I do,” Dan said hotly. “We knew what we were getting into when we said we loved each other.”

“I knew. Not you.”

Dan opened his hand just then and stared down into it. When had he picked up one of the pieces of the broken plate?

“He always said he would change, and she always believed him,” Phil said quietly. He paused and held out his palm for the shard, but when Dan didn’t stir, he let his hand drift back down to his knee. Phil continued: “We believed him too, I think. Partly because we wanted to, and partly because he believed himself. That much I realize now.”

Dan closed his eyes, but there was no going back now. No way to shut out the truth when he was beginning to understand _everything_.

“I’m like him,” Phil said again. “I believe myself when I say I’m going to change. I know you believe me, and that’s far, far worse. You deserve to be happy.”

“Please,” Dan gasped out. His stomach felt as though it was ripping apart. “Please just love me.”

Phil breathed a sigh like the sound of constellations dying.

“I do love you. That’s why I’m telling you to go.”

Dan shook his head, eyes wide but unseeing. The ceramic shard dug deeper into the flesh of his palm. “No. You’re wrong.”

Because Dan would much rather be wrong, today and tomorrow, and the day after that, than spend a minute apart from Phil.

“I need some air.”

~

“You all right there, mate?”

Dan moved his head sluggishly in the direction of the voice coming from the police car. Only then did the details of his surroundings slowly filter in: the pulsing street light above him, the gurgle of the sewers, the cold dampness of the sidewalk against his jean-clad thighs.

“I shouldn’t be.”

The rasp of his voice seems to say something to the policeman. He shifts his car to park and leans over to open the passenger door. “Why don’t you get in and maybe we can help you find where you need to go?”

_Where I need to go. Where do I need to go?_

Hours later, awake still, he drifts back to the consciousness of his body and finds his gaze glued to the strip of gauze wrapped roughly around his palm and over his thumb. He doesn’t remember being dropped off at the hospital--though he rarely remembers things anymore--but the work seems painfully recognizable. He can see the long, pale fingers in his mind, cradling his injured hand with nothing but gentleness as they shakily shroud the gash with the bandage.

And he doesn’t know what to do with this information.

 

V.

Frank Ocean is blaring in his ears when he boards the train. Everything looks almost familiar, too familiar, even though he’s certain he has never been on this particular tube before. He can almost see himself down the aisle, body slumped in its seat and curved against Phil’s shoulder in a vision of fatigue and comfort and trust.

He shakes his head. He almost wants to say that the ugly claw of emotion is scratching at his chest, but he shoves it down. The escape is familiar. The escape feels far, far safer than opening that door.

Maybe he’s a sociopath for not crying. It won’t be the first time he’s considered the thought, nor the last.

Somebody bumps into him from behind, there’s a flurry of apologies, and it’s only then that he realizes he’s been rooted to the spot in the middle of the aisle, swaying on his feet in indecision. The two girls that crashed into him make their way around him with an embarrassed bob of their heads. His gaze snaps downward to where they are holding hands, the slightly older one leading the younger to a seat by the window. The older one is clad in what appears to be office attire--a blouse askew at the end of the day, necktie loosened, slacks rumpled from work--while the younger one cradles a battered backpack in her lap. Countless rings adorn her slender fingers. The older girl plays with them absently as they swing hands between them.

Happy. Content. In love. They still seem in love.

His tired feet finally find a bench for him. He rests his head against the window with a thump and watches his breath fog up the glass in one sluggish movement.

Dan remembers a Day in the Life vlog Phil made where Dan drew a sad face in the vapor of a window. He growls internally at the memory.

But it’s too late. As if triggered, the cloud of his breath clears before him, and through the glass stands a figure so tall and familiar that it can’t be true.

He’s wearing the red and navy dinosaur sweater Dan gave him so long ago. His pale collarbones jut out from the neckline. His glasses are crooked, eyes rimmed with shadows. But what yanks the breath from Dan’s chest is the messy black hair pushed up into a quiff.

Dan’s hand has curled into a fist against the window without him realizing it. His heart stutters, once, twice--and then Phil raises his gaze and stares right at him.

Dan can’t breathe. His vision begins to swim before him, and the very veins beneath the skin of his knuckles are shaking. The icy cold of the glass burns beneath his fingertips.

Phil does not move or open his mouth to speak; neither does his gaze swerve away from Dan’s. The look they share is weighted, perhaps for the first time, by everything they never could share before: all the unanswered questions at the blink of midnight, the choked back tears over broken bottle shards, uncounted bruises and clumsy unspoken apologies and wordless, voiceless desperation.

Phil is moving then, and for half a second Dan almost thinks he’s going to open his mouth to say “I love you.” Or maybe step up to the doorway of the cabin and lean in, whispering, “I need us to try again.” The wildest and most lung-shattering fantasies race through Dan’s mind, but as his brain steadies and the panic begins to die down again in his throat, he knows that there is no denying the resolve in Phil’s broken blue eyes.

Phil raises his arm. Dan feels the phantom of a flinch within him. Then Phil’s hand is there in front of him, pressed against the glass, fingertips white with the contact with the freezing vapor. They stand like that for nearly forever, fingers meeting through an invisible barrier, so close and yet so far.

There’s a jarring squeak and Phil’s fingers cut through the mist on the window. The tube has lurched with a groan and begun to pick up momentum. Dan wants to snatch his hand back again, but somehow, he can’t. He twists his head round to search again for Phil’s face. It’s still there in the dark sea of the crowd he never noticed before was there: pale, blinking, shivering with emotion.

Fine tremors scurry through Dan’s shoulders. In his mind he counts them, seizes at them as a distraction, snarls against the emotion pounding at the door.

He counts the beats of the train tracks vibrating beneath him. He’s counting the clinks of the rings on the girl’s fingers in the next row over.

Counting cherries. Counting beer bottles.

The hot moisture searing his cheeks.

And this time, for the first time, he finds himself counting tears. 

_Fin_


	2. Author's Note

Those who've stuck with it to the end, thank you all for reading.

I wrote this somewhat as a personal challenge to myself to write about characters who exist in the grays. How does abuse start? Are all abusers oblivious to the effect they have on their loved ones? Is it possible to be _good_ and _bad_ at the same time, to the most extreme ends of the spectrum?

As for Dan, the victim, I wanted to explore as well as shed light on an issue with special meaning to me: dissociation. It's often classified as an emotional disorder, though it can be lived with. When I was younger, I was told by someone I was apathetic or incapable of empathy because I shut down in the face of conflict and pain. For a long while, I thought I was a sociopath. The fear became real when I realized my dad legitimately was one.

But when I was in college and my recovery process for some personal trauma truly began, I realized I was, in fact, capable of emotion--deep, deep emotion. And in order to evade the tears or the comeback of suicidal thoughts, I often simply...shut my emotions off.

(It sounded an awful lot like The Vampire Diaries, I know.)

More research and introspection finally made the light bulb go off for me. What I have is not sociopathy, but dissociation. Basically, it's this thing where you go about your daily life not feeling like yourself at all, because you've been detached from your emotional core and you feel your entire identity is tied into that. Perhaps the hardest part of being in a dissociative spell is knowing it has to end, and anticipating the flood of emotion that ensues. In my own experience, I sometimes keep pushing away that emotion even when I feel it knocking and saying "Time's up!" Because that's what dissociation sometimes is: a defense mechanism, activated either consciously or unconsciously.

It was no small relief when I began to follow Dodie Clark and read her Instagram posts sharing her experiences with dissociation and depression. Now, years later, I'm happy to say I'm nearly at a stage of acceptance with it that I can write a story centered around a dissociative character. As a literary device, I chose to pick up on verb tense changes to indicate what Dan accepts or pushes away from his emotional core: past tense for the things and events he doesn't understand, present tense for those he accepts or even treasures. For the most part, that meant flashbacks of the good days with Phil were in present tense and present-day scenes after the abuse started were in past tense. Parts 4 and 5, though, seek to belie the simple pattern. As Dan and Phil touch hands through the glass and Dan thinks and feels in present tense, does that indicate turning on his emotions and moving toward acceptance? The interpretation is up to you.

I hope in some way that this fic might have helped you or enlightened you, and above all, that you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to comment your thoughts below! I absolutely adore hearing from y'all. :)

P.S. Yes, I may or may not have made a cheeky self-insert of me and my fiancée in the last part. I’m shameless.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Playlist of theme songs can be found [here](http://theoceanismyinkwell.tumblr.com/post/173881233798/playlist-for-the-one-who-liked-to-be-wrong-a).


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